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Session 1997-98
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Scottish Grand Committee Debates

Child Care Strategy For Scotland

Scottish Grand Committee

Tuesday 21 July 1998

[Mr. John Maxton in the Chair]

The Chairman: The first item of business is a statement by the Secretary of State on the comprehensive spending review.

Comprehensive Spending Review

10.30 am

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Donald Dewar): With permission, Mr. Chairman, I shall make a statement about the comprehensive spending review as it affects Scotland. The comprehensive spending review is about Labour delivering for Scotland. I want Scotland to be the best in Britain. This settlement can make that a reality. I shall first explain the Government's reform strategy since we came to power 15 months ago. Our first priority was jobs and we established the new deal in our first Budget last year. Next came the reforms to make work pay through the working families tax credit and increases in child benefit in the March Budget. The Chancellor has raised pensions, giving security to the oldest and most vulnerable in our communities, and the comprehensive spending review has allowed me to deliver for Scotland's schools and hospitals a massive boost, to set them up properly for the next century. Jobs, pensions, health and education therefore, are Labour's priorities the priorities of a great reforming Government.

This settlement delivers an additional £4 billion for Scotland in the three years to 2002. It is an increase in real terms of 6.8 per cent more than £800 extra for every man, woman and child in Scotland. That is not a hand-out, the political equivalent of a free lunch. The money is for modernisation. Our approach is to invest for reform, so that we get increasingly modern, efficient and effective services for our people.

We are embarking on a process that will revolutionise Government spending, making it ever more focused on outputs rather than inputs. That is why our plans offer firm commitments on class sizes, nursery places, classroom assistants and much more. The settlement offers, for the first time, a three-year public expenditure deal, which will give extra certainty for the new Scottish Parliament. Our plans will deliver almost £1 billion more into Scottish public services next year than would have been spent under the old Tory plans. That will provide a handsome start for the new Scottish Parliament.

There are new pledges on education which sum up the spirit of the settlement: all three-year-olds in Scotland will have the right to a free nursery place by 2002; 5,000 new classroom assistants in Scottish primary schools will bring the ratio of adults to children to 1:15 by 2002, and 42,000 more students will enter Scottish colleges and universities over the period of the review proof positive that the Government mean what they say on widening access. The settlement will, for the first time, make a reality of a national child care strategy for Scotland. More than £500 million will be invested over the three years, which will double what is spent now.

The intention of our pledge to create 5,000 additional classroom assistants is to free teachers in primary schools of unnecessary administrative burdens and provide them with more support that will allow them to concentrate on their central role in learning and teaching. The new classroom assistants will be under the supervision of the classroom teacher and shall introduce special work-based training qualifications for them.

My second priority is to finance the creation of the most modern health service in Europe. We promise that by next March, waiting lists will be below the levels we inherited and that there will be a £1.8 billion uplift in health spending to maintain that downward pressure. Waiting lists will come down and stay down as we invest for modernisation. The increase in health spending will further rise by £300 million, to almost £600 million and £900 million over the three-year period of the spending review. We shall restore free eye tests for those over 60. No one can doubt our commitment to the essential principle of a system that offers comprehensive cover and is free at the time of need. That will allow the dedicated staff, who have done so much over the years to care for the health service, to face the future with confidence. A £300 million boost for housing will pave the way for greater community ownership and for more private investment in our council housing stock. I am determined to make progress in reducing the debt burden that has built up over the years.

For local government, the settlement can mark a new start. We will reward and support local government in the delivery of vital services to the people of Scotland. I propose a three-year settlement. Councils have wanted that for a long time. It will allow them to plan ahead within a secure framework. Scottish council budgets will increase by £840 million over those three years. Next year, expenditure is set to rise by 4.8 per cent. Councils will welcome the end of crude, universal capping. That is another manifesto pledge that has been delivered. We are also allowing local government more freedom in keeping the receipts from the sale of their own property. That will encourage greater efficiency.

Tomorrow we shall publish our White Paper on transport in Scotland. Without pre-empting that announcement, let me say to the Committee that the comprehensive spending review settlement for transport represents a modal shift. We are determined to be radical and innovative in the face of problems that, if we do nothing, will simply get worse.

As an important part of our approach to those problems, we shall set out details of a new public transport fund that will enable the Government to support integrated transport initiatives. For example, the resources that we propose to make available abut £30 million a year would be enough to provide in a single year 10 bus priority schemes, two park and ride schemes and three new railway stations, such as that at Dalgety Bay.

Another manifesto pledge has been honoured. We have firmly shut the gates on the programme of large-scale sales of Forestry Commission woods and forests that was planned by our predecessors. That has not been easy as we have had to close a substantial gap. An additional £93 million has been found over the next three years. I hope that that will ensure that there are no significant sales and that we maintain the record on access and on mixed planting that is so important to the environment and to enjoyment of the Scottish countryside.

We are also investing in Scotland's new Parliament. The plans allow for a world-class Parliament building that will be the symbol of the new democracy in Scotland. In future, Members of that new Parliament will decide what Scotland's spending priorities are. However, today's settlement tells the people what they will get from this Government and from my party: jobs, pensions, education and health.

The programme is built for Scotland and it is designed to meet Scotland's needs. It reflects directly the priorities that Scotland voted for at the election. It will be delivered. It amounts to a social revolution of which I am very proud. I commend the settlement to the Committee.

The Chairman: Before calling the first speaker, I remind Committee members that the statement has no time limit. However, many hon. Members wish to speak in the following debate, so I shall limit the statement accordingly.

Mr. James Wallace (Orkney and Shetland): I thank the Secretary of State for giving the statement to the Committee. It is helpful for the Committee to have the opportunity to consider the comprehensive spending review. It would be encouraging to hear that the Committee is meeting again tomorrow to receive the White Paper on transport.

Over the greater part of the past 12 months my right hon. and hon. Friends in particularly, my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) have urged the Chancellor of the Exchequer to open his war chest, so it would be less than gracious of us not to acknowledge that has been done. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we should examine outputs and the targets that he has set himself.

We acknowledge that the extension of pre-school provision for three-year-olds, for which we have campaigned, will take place. Expanded provision for classroom assistants is very welcome, as is additional funding for further and higher education. That shows what happens when debate in the Scottish Grand Committee is initiated by the Liberal Democrats. We appreciate such a response. Reversing cuts in investment in housing is also welcome. Innovative measures in the national health service, such as one-stop clinics, instant personal booking and the free eye tests for all

Mr. Dewar: No, free eye tests are for those over 60.

Mr. Wallace: That is a pity: I was about to give a particularly warm welcome to free eye tests for all and to ask the Secretary of State why he does not do the same for dental checks.

On these occasions, the Government have a tendency to put the best gloss on their actions. The Opposition have duty to strip away that gloss, for example, by pointing out that average spending during this Parliament will be £13.1 billion a year in real terms, against £13.5 billion during the previous Parliament. However, such discussion of the figures often generates more heat than light, and I should like to ask the Secretary of State some specific questions.

Over the period of the review, what proportion of tuition fees will be retained in the higher education sector? Will the Secretary of State confirm that it will be 100 per cent.?

He mentioned the relaxation of the requirement that local authorities should use 50 per cent. of non-housing asset sales to redeem debt. Why has that relaxation not been extended to sales from council housing? I recall that the Labour shadow Secretary of State for Scotland was very annoyed when the previous Government imposed provisions relating to such sales.

What are the implications for the recruitment and retention of doctors, nurses and teachers of the Chancellor's statement about public sector pay? Given the small reserves set out in last week's White Paper, if the Chancellor's plans are assailed by higher inflation, and tax revenues are undermined by growth that is less than was expected, how does the Secretary of State intend that the outputs to which he has so clearly fixed his objectives will be maintained?

When the right hon. Member for Hamilton, South (Mr. Robertson) was welcoming or rather, not welcoming the 1994-95 figures, which gave greater Departmental expenditure limits than any that have been announced today, he said:

    "Only those who believe that inflation will not affect Government spending will believe the figures and the gloss we have just had from the Secretary of State." [Official Report, 8 December 1993; Vol. 234, c. 315.]

If inflation erodes the value of the cash settlement that the Secretary of State announced, how does he intend to maintain the outputs?

Finally, when I wrote to the Secretary of State, in November 1997, about additional money for the NHS, he replied:

    "As regards the Barnett formula, the long standing convention is that the formula does not operate automatically in-year. This means that if resources are made available for (or removed from) an English comparable public expenditure programme the Scottish has no entitlement to the formula consequentials."

As we are not discussing a settlement for three years, will the Secretary of State confirm that any increase in an English spending Department during that period will have a knock-on effect, by increasing the amount available, initially to his Department and subsequently to the Scottish Parliament?

 
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